Increased frequency of inspection hampering implementation work in Railways?

NEW DELHI: A study by Railway Board has found with focus on safety and infrastructure upgradation, some zonal railways have “prescribed over-inspections” on prolonged basis which is taking a toll on implementation work and stretching working hours of employees by several hours.

The study by Railway Board’s Transformation Cell found instances of prescribing over-inspections on a prolonged basis and it was revealed that officials require excessive duty hours per month to undertake laid down codal inspections, which is quite an onerous task to be performed alongside other functions.

“Instances of prescribing over-inspections on a prolonged basis have come to notice if Board, such over inspections on a prolonged basis are bound to result into lack of attention in other crucial areas related to implementation and monitoring,” said a communication by Railway Board to all zonal railways.

The Railway Board said that quality inspection is the sine qua non for Railway working.

“It is incumbent on Railway officials to perform this function in most effective and efficient manner, at a frequency laid down in codes manuals/instructions. Along with the inspections, quality follow up, implementation with due resource allocations to ensure compliance on a sustained basis is equally important. Therefore a reasonable balance of time between inspections, consultations, planning, designing, tendering and monitoring is essential,” it said.

The directions further said that without any dilution of the existing instructions, it should be ensured that inspection schedules already codified or as conveyed through manuals/special instructions are not increased on a regular basis.

“Also, it would be in fitness that officials other than general management/safety, concentrate on their respective domain rather than on other departments, in order to focus on their respective domain expertise and also not to unduly generate voluminous inspection notes for the field officials of other departments,”